


Strange Fruit

by TheSubtextMachine



Category: The Stepford Wives (1975)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, I'm a lesbian so i'm gonna make this, Stepford whomst??????, They were gay and im not sorry, Wives and their kids!, this fandom deserved at least one fic, you can watch this movie in full on youtube don't miss out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 03:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14824254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSubtextMachine/pseuds/TheSubtextMachine
Summary: Bobby and Joanna get the hell out of Stepford. Of course they fall in love.Also known as my indulgent fix it fic with the happy ending we all needed.... these gays needed better





	Strange Fruit

Bobby and Joanna get the hell out of Stepford, with wind in their hair and children squished in the backseat. Bobby’s car radio is blasting soul music, and the windows are down, and Joanna feels freedom resting on her bones. A cigarette rests between her fingers, and the kids are confused but okay considering the circumstances. They chatter about where they’re going (the answer is Bobby’s mother’s house, so they can avoid the looming danger of their husbands and get the hell out of Stepford). 

As they float across the thin faded charcoal of New York backroads, both of them feel the question of what was actually going on in that quiet, menacing town. 

“Down with Stepford!” Bobby shouts, joining in with the noise that fills the long minutes, from the whipping of the wind in and throughout the car and the kids that talk in the back.

“Down with Stepford!” Joanna shouts, joining in with the clamor, matching Bobby’s energy as best she can. Both of Bobby’s hands are clutching the wheel with a hidden tension, and Joanna tries to rectify that by scooting closer to her in the bench seat.

It’s the kind of spring day that’s absolutely perfect for leaving your possibly murderous and definitely sexist husbands to live with your best friend and create a new family with her, Joanna realizes, as their slightly too-sweaty bodies lean against each other, trying to generate strength between the two of them. 

Saxophones blare into the thick spring air and Bobby smiles her chapped, chipped lipstick smile.

“I’m so glad we met.”

“Me too.”

/

Bobby and Joanna find themselves a cramped house on the outskirts of the city, and it’s not the perfect house for a writer, a photographer, and their 5 collective kids, but it is so much better than fearing for their life that it feels like heaven sits on top of that cracked tile.

Joanna’s contract gives way to a steady income, and Bobby works a day job of waitressing while freelancing for some local papers. 

Space is limited, with only three bedrooms for seven full people, so the designate a girls room, a boys room, and Bobby and Joanna decide to just share a bed in the room left. It comes down to slightly contrived logic about space and wasting money when neither of them _mind_ or anything, and it feels like an excuse to sleep in a bed together (which it totally is).

The motley crew of the Markowe-Eberharts (as coined by Bobby’s eldest, who insisted that they were more family than friend at this rate) manage to craft a life, one of oddball family pictures and ducking calls from a town they would rather forget. Carol Van Sant finds their new telephone number, and it scares them so much that everyone in the family is instructed to answer the phone, without fail, in gibberish. Bobby came up with the solution, and always insists to sincere non-Stepford callers that it’s a matter of children’s pranking or wavy connections.

Carol stops calling, and shortly after their husbands stop too. The only religious caller from that plastic town is “Diz”, who’s sinister voice is hung up on without fail.

One of Joanna’s favorite moments from those early months is when Bobby’s middle child, a son baptized as “Jonathan” who insisted on being called Felix for whatever reason, comes back from kindergarten with a crinkled slip of yellow construction paper in his hand. He drew a representation of his family, complete with a house the size of a penny and six of his adopted siblings/best friends. His two moms, drawn so incoherently that the only way to tell the difference is Joanna’s longer hair, hold hands and have a single, sloppy blue heart in between them.

She doesn’t in front of Felix, but Joanna definitely cries in the bathroom, tears slipping into her wide grin.

Bobby’s favorite is a quieter moment, at 11pm on a Sunday night. All the kids are asleep, and Joanna is already in her pajamas when Bobby brings in the note from Kim’s teacher as if it were a grand prize.

Shaking with silent giggles, she shoved it on the bed, beckoning for the bemused Joanna to read the letter.

Addressed to “Mrs. Eberhart or Mrs. Markowe-Eberhart,” it awkwardly dances around the question of what the hell Kim is talking about. In polite terms, it asks what Stepford was, and why Kim tells long, elaborate stories about robot children in private school uniforms, and whether or not this Bobby is an aunt or a “partner”. Joanna is more confused than amused, merely holding the paper up in silent question.

“No, no, it’s so funny! Carole Francis is my coworker’s mom, and she is the most Catholic, insane woman you have ever heard of! And here she is, asking about lesbians and robot children!”

Joanna doesn’t find it as horrifically funny as Bobby, but the energy catches on, and there’s a smile on her face. 

“You need to sleep, partner,” she drawls, looking at her best friend with warmth stored in her eyes.  
“Stop, stop! That makes me sound like I’m in a western movie… paaartner.”

Soon, they are both giggling fools that are happy and a little bit in love with each other, both without any answers to Mrs. Francis’ questions about whether Stepford was real or whether or not they were lesbians.

The growing pains are just as real, especially in those early days. The kids miss their fathers, and have questions about their sudden transplant into an artist’s life. 

They’ve lost the jewel green expanses of grass, made for kids to run on. The cramped space makes it hard to do anything active, and the nearby parks are threadbare compared to the lush playscapes of Stepford. It becomes easier to let the aggression of the days and nights in this sepia toned paradise build up, and it’s harder to escape the stress of the other 6 people in cramped quarters.

It doesn’t help that even with all the spared expenses, money remains tight. 

Shoes break and are outgrown before there’s enough cash to replace them, and they can only eat the basic meals for the longest time. They also have to take advantage of every possible help with the kids they can get, from Bobby’s mom who is okay with letting them spend the night when Bobby and Joanna get tied up at work, or Stephen, Bobby’s hip friend from New York City who could teach a masterclass in distracting 5 kids at once.

The early months are long, and they drag on, but soon Bobby and Joanna find that they have a nice rhythm in their new life, one unbothered by the relentless weight of the patriarchy on their backs. Women’s Liberation activity does have to take a backseat to their ridiculously busy lifestyles, but they do manage to squeeze themselves into the occasional protest or fundraiser.

/

It’s nice, so supremely nice that Bobby kisses Joanna one night, when the kids are at grandma’s and they are both bone-tired from working all day and night. Everything is sore, from the creak of the bed springs to the ache in their legs, and the only light in the house comes from the golden glow of the bedside lamp. 

The only sound that fills that still air of the room is the shuffling of linen against linen, and the quiet smacks of bare feet on hardwood floors. 

Joanna begins humming some soft, slow tune. It sounds like something from one of Bobby’s records, and Bobby finds herself filled with this overwhelming warmness, the kind that consumes her and makes her want to be close enough to Joanna so nobody could tell them apart. This kind of urge isn’t unusual to her, but in moments like these, so quiet and so close, it seems much more real than it ever felt.   
The lamp light flickers, and Bobby smiles at Joanna from across the crumpled bed sheet. Joanna returns the actions, shyness in her fluttering eyes. Bobby leans across the bed, and it’s a slow, soft press against Joanna’s lips, chaste and quiet. 

In the soft fuzz of Bobby’s mind, it’s nothing but an expression of the velvety affection between them.

It’s not hot, or tight in their lungs. It’s just warmth, surrounding them and transferred in the soft expression.

They separate and fall asleep, secretly a little bit in love. Bobby slings her ankle over Joanna’s, keeping contact through the navy blue night. They’re still friends, best friends.

It’s nice.

/

They fall into the habit of kissing each other goodnight and linking pinkies whenever they find themselves on a solitary Sunday morning walk. The world grows dewy around them, and the kids grow. Now even Bobby and Joanna sign their last names as “Markowe-Eberhart”, because in a warmly friendly way, they are more or less married.

Their dinky refrigerator becomes adorned with all sorts of achievements: Joanna’s pictures, their kids’ drawing and exemplary report cards, the acceptance letter from Bobby’s publisher after her manuscript was chosen. They start splurging on the small luxuries: thrift store cardigans and a subscription to the local paper. 

Women’s Liberation becomes bigger in the household, when babysitter’s let Bobby and Joanna go to more meetings, and the feminist spirit catches in the household. Kim does a book report on every feminist hero she can find a book on, and even the sons stop worrying about seeming like a girl.

Everyone that the kids would never have crossed paths with in suburbia enters their house at some point, from an androgynous musician to Kathy to Anita, one of Joanna’s photographer friends who complained of angst with her girlfriend, who couldn’t pick her socks up off the floor.

Bobby writes Joanna a poem, a quiet, lilting verse that makes her heart flutter in ways that she isn’t ready to confront.

Everything follows a new rhythm, the rhythm of spring and growth. Their hearts are beating and soft sighs fill the room, and beneath hooded eyes, the vines of love grow. 

They still don’t kiss in front of the kids.

/

“Oh my god,” Bobby gasps at the newspaper in front of her. The suddenness makes Joanna slosh a bit of her coffee on the kitchen floor, and the kids look towards their mom, her hair still pinned up and robe flowing on top of her pajamas.

“What?” Joanna asks, setting down her coffee and already making her way across the kitchen, concern etched on her brow.

“I was right. We were right,” says Bobby, and in the frenzy of the morning breakfast, she meets Joanna halfway, shoving the newspaper at her. It only takes Joanna a moment to find the word that has been on her mind for so long.

Stepford.

She reads the headline, speaking of the Stepford Men’s Association and shallow graves. It speaks on suspicious behavior and a Disney robot-creator with too much hubris. 

Every detail in the article is revolting, even the things that Joanna had already figured out. Horror hits her, until she’s in a trance as her eyes follow words about long weekends away that ended with murder.

Slowly, she brings her eyes back up to Bobby. The kids have stopped eating, they too are transfixed by this scene, even though they know nothing about it. A moment of brittle silence passes, before Joanna’s mouth begins to move, and words begin to form, breaking the lime green air.

“We were right.”

It’s a loaded victory, and Bobby lets out a long, deep sigh as she steps closer to Joanna, taking the newspaper out of her shaking hands. Few things feel as absurdly and terrifyingly real as this moment, with tight silence and Bobby’s dark, clouded eyes. Everything is so fresh, so rough, and neither of them know who leaned in, but they’re holding on to each other fiercely, hot tears leaking onto their cheeks.

Soon, they separate, and Felix breaks the silence with a terrified “what’s going on?”. 

Neither know how to answer, especially when Joanna is still shaking like there’s no tomorrow, but Bobby takes a shot. 

“Do you remember Stepford? The town where we used to live?”

All the kids nod, confused and tense.

“Well, something very bad happened in that town. We left because we thought that something bad was happening, but we just found out that we were right in leaving.”

“What bad thing?” Kim asks.

“People were... hurting other people.”

“Is that why we don’t talk to daddy anymore?” 

“Yes. Now eat your breakfasts! It wouldn’t be a Sunday with the Markowe-Eberharts if we didn’t have a day at the park, and you guys will need that energy!” Bobby says, still shaky as she holds Joanna’s hand in a vice grip. The kids tuck back into their meals, still worried and afraid.

At least they got the hell out of Stepford, Bobby thinks as Joanna picks up the article again, to read the details with clearer eyes.

/

The shock settles, until it’s just the slim tremor of a nightmare or the sparkly yellow-green of local news stations, visiting the ghost town to find the answers.

In this time, Bobby’s birthday rolls around.

It’s signaled by a yellow star sticker on the calendar, and it is somehow heavenly when it actually arrives. The whole family piles into their neighbor’s van (he lets them borrow it for the day, claiming that it’s his present for Bobby), and trek across town to the best park they can find, full of the open fields of sandy green that their mom had missed. 

A gingham blanket from deep in one of the kids’ closet is laid out atop freshly mowed glass, and they forfeit the classic basket in lieu of eight paper bags, all worn to near-tearing.

There was no room for a traditional cake, instead they only had a large bag of cookies, with icing smushed beyond comprehension. Bobby supposes that the words were originally some variation of “Happy Birthday Mom”, but it doesn’t really matter to her, because the image of her kids crowded around the counter to decorate it is too precious for her to worry about the result. 

She’s touched the tip of some sort of paradise, laughing into her sugar cookies while her kids are slathered with a frankly ridiculous amount of sunscreen, and Joanna’s picking a dandelion from the grass, and reaching over to place it in Bobby’s hair.

Despite the heat and humidity of an almost-summer afternoon, Bobby shivers at the light touch of Joanna’s hand against the crown of her ear, and they both smile a little bit wider as Joanna’s hand retreats. 

The sun shines so bright that it seems like a spotlight. Everything is bleached out and simply fantastic, from the sweet juice of the strawberries to the way that Bobby’s sunglasses give everything a rosy tint, until they are pulled down to get a proper view with her classic teasing smile.

That night, giggling and tanned a bit after the exposure, Joanna kisses her for real. It’s no longer one of those purely platonic shows of affection, it’s now something richer. Joanna lets her hand drift to Bobby’s jaw, and it seems like some kind of cosmic fate when Bobby responds in kind.

Her blood feels like it’s thrumming in her head as they fall deeper and deeper into forever, like it’s a celebration.

/

A week later, after a drifting conversation about labels and what they even _are_ , anyway, Joanna and Bobby struggle with how to break the news to the kids.

The world decides for them, mostly because Kim races into the kitchen before they think she’s even up, and catches them kissing. 

She’s already a fifth grader, so they can’t really pass it off as an expression of friendship or just try to act like it never happened, so they just explain it to her. Her head is tilted a bit to the side as they make clear that they are together in the way that Anita and her partner are together.

This appears to make enough sense to Kim that she takes it upon herself to explain this exact thing to all the other kids, like a proper know-it-all. Everything is sweetness and smiles over pancakes that morning, as the kids have already gotten fairly used to the idea of having two moms.

For what seems live the millionth time that year, Bobby and Joanna feel insanely lucky.

/

Only a couple of weeks later, spring turns into summer, heralded by the classic elementary school graduation. Two of their kids are moving on to middle school, and they both accept their certificates with pride in the school auditorium to the soundtrack of shoes scuffling and kids whispering to each other.

Bobby and Joanna sit near the back, since they were chronically late to anything and everything. It’s still easy to spot their kids on stage, because their other children who sit on either side of the pair make pains to point and yelp whenever Kim or Henry do anything of note, even when it’s bending down to tie their ragged shoelaces.

The school’s occasionally maligned choir teacher plays Pomp and Circumstance on a slightly out of tune piano, and the kids get their fair share of applause whenever their name is called. 

Bobby and Joanna sit in the middle of their horde of kids, discreetly holding hands. Their life hasn’t taken the turn to calmness yet, if the delighted screams of their kids around them are anything to go by, but the smiles on their lips remain wide and a bit tearful. They squeeze each other’s hand when Henry and Kim are called up on stage, one after the other.

“Can you believe it?” Joanna whispers, leaning in a bit to her partner’s thin shoulder.

“Barely. Who woulda thought that Henry had it in him?” Bobby jokes, gaze zeroed in on Henry in the background, yammering on to one of his friends about the tooth he lost the night before, if his frantic pointing at his mouth was anything to go by.

Joanna responds by swatting Bobby a bit with her free hand, using the flimsy paper of her program.

“I _mean_ , can you believe that we made it all the way here? Just a year or two ago, we were terrified housewives. Now look at us! Career women and-”

“And paaaartners,” Bobby drawls, and it’s truly a labor of love for Joanna to not swat her again with the program.

“You know what, paaaaartner?” Joanna asks, squeezing Bobby’s hand again. The kids scream at something on stage, but their attention is on each other.

“What?” Bobby asks, not even bothering to joke. Her head is tilted a bit, but her eyes stay steady on Joanna.

“I love you. And I love the life we made,” Joanna says, and her eyes become a bit watery. It’s all Bobby can do to keep from crying herself. Bobby squeezes Joanna’s hand.

“I want you to know that if we weren’t surrounded by our kids’ friends and their parents, I would be kissing you so hard right now.”

This makes Joanna laugh, which causes a couple of tears to spill over, which catches Felix’s attention.

“Mom, Mom! What’s wrong?” he asks, childlike concern glowing in his eyes. 

“Nothing is wrong, sweetie! Sometimes, when people are really happy, they cry a bit! I just- I’m just-” before Joanna cuts herself off by crying too hard to speak coherently. Bobby swings her arm around Joanna’s shoulders, pulling her in to hug out the tears. Felix reaches as far as he can to join in to this comforting, but he can only get his hand on Joanna’s arm.

Naturally, this makes her cry harder, especially when all the other kids try (with varying degrees of success) to join in. It’s a jumble of limbs reaching over and happy tears.

Joanna cries even harder, letting the warmth of family surround her and fill her up to the brim. 

/

A couple of years later, when all the kids are out of elementary school, Joanna and Bobby get all dressed up in white, and they crowd into their friend’s house, which is childless enough to safely decorate with candles and streamers without fear of getting them torn down. Bobby manages to mix yellowy white pants with a bright white shirt, but it’s barely worse put together than Joanna’s wide-brim hat and skirt that’s an entirely different pattern than her shirt.

They make an eclectic pair, with Bobby’s short hair running loose and Joanna’s curtain of hair sorted into a prim braid. The ceremony has no legal bearing, but they still say I Do and slide rings onto each other’s fingers.

The kids stay up late for that Saturday night, even if it means that the youngest ones can be seen yawning into their hands in the back of the living room. Their closest friends sit on the floor and lawn chairs, tearing up a little bit when they speak heady monologues for their vows.

It’s sweet like the grocery store vanilla cake that they eat to celebrate the union.

If there is such thing as a happily ever after, they manage to find it, even if it means running away from their murderous town with her future wife.

**Author's Note:**

> For the uhhhhh 3 whole people who read this, thank you so much! It's my way of kicking of Pride Month, and I hope it was fun to read! Comment, please!! Or follow me on tumblr @thesubtextmachine and shoot me a message there!


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